So many people suffer, and in so many different ways. I think it’s a unique thing when one suffers as a teenage girl. I’m not saying it’s easier or harder, just that it creates different obstacles that you need to get through. I have not written for awhile because so many things have happened in the last few weeks. My life seems to have completely changed, in almost every way. A few weeks ago I was feeling so alone, so isolated from everyone around me, and it began to really affect me. I have to say no to anything my friends ask me to do. I used to wear myself out, trying to do every single thing that I used to be able to do. But I realized that when I say yes to activities, it’s no fun anyway because I have no energy to spend talking to people or having fun.  I end up having a worse time there than I would at home. These days I spend almost all of my time in my bed, except for when I’m at school. This is the only way I can have enough strength to get through each day and it breaks my heart each time I have to reject an offer to hang out, because I want to so badly.  All I want to do is be able to go have fun whether it’s with my family or my friends, doing what a normal 15 year old girl loves to do. But I can’t. However, things started to change, or I started to lose a tiny bit of that loneliness when I came home one day after school and realized my brother had entered a contest for me (to win a trip anywhere I wanted to go). Not only did he spend all of his time writing an essay and making an amazing video, but we also won the contest! I cannot express how much it means to someone when somebody shows you so much genuine love. A couple weeks later I was also surprised, and completely shocked, when my school threw a surprise birthday party for me, the whole school by the way. The love and care shown by my family and my friends, and even those I didn’t know, went SO far. They will never know how much they really did for me. The only thing that I wish is that I could do something for all of them that would be even half of what they have done for me. I do not feel like I deserve any of it, but I’m not dumb enough to reject a gift haha. If there was one thing that I have learned from all of this, it is that love is one of the most important things that you can offer someone. The only way I know how to rightly describe love is this; “This is how we know what love is: Jesus Christ laid down his life for us.” 1 John 3:16 and “God is love.” 1 John 4:16.